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Datashare changes

During the September “patch night” (Sept. 9) when all of the campus machines are shut down to receive their security and performance patches, the Datashare storage system will be changed to a virtual computer. This will not change the access for the system, but will make the system more effective. The datashare service will be unavailable during the period of 10:00 PM September 9 to 2:00 AM September 10.

How does this affect me?

The Datashare service will be unavailable during the downtime / switch over. (Well, there is a new feature added – see below.)

Why are we doing this?

A primary reason for the change is that the physical “Datashare” machine is getting older, and is on extended warranty support from the vendor. The move to the virtual environment permits us to renew the hardware supporting the service without disruption. This change also allows us to upgrade the MicroSoft Windows operating system supporting the service to a more current version of Windows Server.

The virtual environment also permits us to be more flexible in the way we operate the service. As an example, earlier this summer, a scheduled power outage in the computer room where the physical Datashare resides required a shutdown for Datashare as well. On the other hand, services using the virtual environment were moved to another server room and did not experience an outage.

What changes will I see when I use it?

For the most part, none. The shares can be mounted the same way as before. (The first time after the change, you may have to reconnect to the shares.) There will be a service added during this change – Previous Versions, which is a simple method of recovering older versions of files on the shares.